Leading Health Indicators

Healthy People 2020 provides a comprehensive set of 10-year, national goals and objectives for improving the health of all Americans. Healthy People 2020 contains 42 topic areas with more than 1,200 objectives. A smaller set of Healthy People 2020 objectives, called Leading Health Indicators (LHIs), have been selected to communicate high-priority health issues and actions that can be taken to address them.

Great strides have been made during the past decade: life expectancy at birth increased; rates of death from coronary heart disease and stroke decreased. Nonetheless, public health challenges remain, and significant health disparities persist.

The Healthy People 2020 LHIs place renewed emphasis on overcoming these challenges as we track progress over the course of the decade. The indicators will be used to assess the health of the Nation, facilitate collaboration across sectors, and motivate action at the national, state, and community levels to improve the health of the U.S. population.